Find Me

by Romily Bernard

  I’m supposed to keep everything perfect—usually

  I want to keep everything perfect. But I tore

  apart my first communion dress. Ripped it into a

  thousand pieces . . . and buried it in the garbage

  so no one would know. I can’t stop thinking about

  how good it felt, and I have just enough left of me

  to know that it shouldn’t have felt so perfect.

  —Page 86 of Tessa Waye’s diary

  Todd calls Bren that night. He tells her everything, and after she tells Lily, Lily demands to talk to me. I take the phone up to my room, and as I listen to Lily sing about how we’re finally free, I watch a man walk out from our neighbor’s tree line again. He stands just beyond of the streetlamp’s light so I can’t see his features, but I know it’s not Carson, because Carson never comes on foot, and I know it’s not a neighbor, because a neighbor wouldn’t stare up at our house. . . .

  It’s Jim Waye. Again.

  “We’re free, Wick!” In the background, I can hear something squeaking. I think Lily’s jumping on the hotel bed. “Dad’s gone! We’re free!”

  “Yeah,” I say, infecting my voice with Lily’s enthusiasm. But the closer I press to the window, the closer I press to him, the less I can manage it.

  He thinks Lily’s here. No one knows she’s gone yet.

  “Wick . . . ?Are you paying attention?”

  Waye moves toward our house, and I shoot to my feet. “Yes. No. Sorry. Lil, I—I think someone’s here. I need to go—”

  “Is it Mr. Waye?”

  I stop, put one hand against the windowsill. “Why would you say that?”

  “He talks to me sometimes. I’ve seen him at school when he comes to pick up Tally. He’s very sad about Tessa. I think he needs a friend. Maybe he came by to see me.”

  “Lily, if Tessa’s dad ever talks to you again, I want you to go find a teacher right away, do you understand?”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it. I’ll explain lat—”

  “You can explain now.” The squeaking—a rhythmic beat before—stops dead. “Dad’s going away for good. Everything’s going to be great, and you’re being weird. I want you to say yes to Bren. I want you to stop whatever you’re doing and say yes.”

  I stare out the window, watch Waye watch the house, and think about telling Lily what’s really going on.

  But I don’t. I can’t.

  Lily feels safe now because her own personal big, bad monster has been dragged away. How could I introduce her to another? How could I live with myself?

  How could I live with myself if he touches her?

  “So are you going to say yes, Wick?”

  I look down at Waye, knowing damn well that, even with the lights off in my room, he can still see my shape at the window. “I don’t . . . I haven’t decided yet. I—”

  Click.

  She hung up on me. I start to call Lily back and then . . . I don’t. When all this is finished, when it’s fixed, maybe I’ll find a way to tell her what really happened. But for now, I turn to the window, start to give Waye my bird finger, but then I stop. Waye is motioning to me! I step closer to the glass, not believing what I’m seeing.

  He wants me to come down?

  Hell no! Wait! Hell yes! I spin around, take the stairs two at a time until I rocket onto our front porch. I’m ready to confront him. Ready to tell him I know he did it. I’m ready . . . to see nothing.

  The street is empty again.

  I look around me. Nothing. I know I saw him. I know—

  “Wicket?” Todd appears at my side. He must have come around the side of the house, and he’s staring at me like I’ve lost my freaking mind. “Are you okay?”

  “I—I don’t know.” I try to think of some sort of legitimate excuse for charging out the front door like my hair’s on fire.

  I don’t know. Maybe it’s time for a little bit of truth?

  “I thought . . . I thought I saw Tessa’s dad staring up at the house.”

  Todd cocks his head. “Why would Jim come by?”

  “I don’t—I don’t know. Lily says he’s been talking to her at school. I just have a bad feeling about it.” Lame, but true. I chew my lower lip and try to gauge Todd’s response.

  He’s astonished, worried. Pissed.

  “Don’t worry, Wicket. I’ll get to the bottom of it. I’ll speak to Lily’s teachers as soon as she’s returns.” Todd backs up a step, opens the door a little wider. “Why don’t you come inside?”

  I nod. Good. Getting to the bottom of things is good. And as I watch Todd turn the dead bolt, I think maybe we’re finally getting to the end of this.

  It’s one thirty in the morning, and I can’t sleep. Part of me thinks it’s because of Lily. Some of me thinks it’s because of Griff. Most of me, however, thinks it’s the four cups of coffee I’ve had in the last three hours. With Bren gone, there’s no one to stop me, so I’ve had as much as I want, and now I’m now so wired I can feel my fingernails growing.

  My cell beeps and the screen flashes. Griff.

  U still up for getting IP addresses?

  Am I still up for it? Hell yes! If we can find who was using that library computer to do the upload, we could catch our guy. My fingers are trembling as I text:

  of course.

  It’s the longest four seconds of my life until he writes:

  Meet me at library tomorrow. 2 p.m.

  I’m early, but I still don’t beat Griff. He’s waiting outside for me, slouching against one of the pillars until I get close enough so he stiffens.

  “You look rough.”

  My cheeks go nuclear. “Gosh, you’re sweet.”

  “Wait.” Griff peels himself off the pillar, rubs the back of his neck. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Then what did you mean?”

  Griff’s eyes inch over my face. “That I’m an idiot.”

  “No, you’re not.” But I am. Because when he’s looking at me, I feel like the only person left in the world, like I’m special just because I’m me. “So. You have a plan for this?”

  Griff’s gaze sweeps across my face. “Is this what you’re like without Lily?”

  Yes. No. “He came to my house again last night, Griff. I know it’s Waye. This has to end. How are we going to steal this stuff?”

  He laughs. “Wicked, we’re not going to steal anything. We’re going to get them to give it to us.”

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  HarperCollins Publishers

  .....................................................................

  Garbage went out today and no one found my

  dead dress. I’m more relieved than I would have

  expected. Everything’s still a secret, and I know

  what I’m going to do is right.

  —Page 86 of Tessa Waye’s diary

  “You can do it,” Griff repeats as we make our way down one long row of books. He stays ahead of me, mostly so the two librarians at the reference desk can’t see me, but also (probably) to keep me from bolting. I am so not on board with this plan.

  He leans one hand on a bookshelf above my head, forces me to stop and look up at him. “It’ll be easy. Just sniffle. Cry a little. Look pitiful. You’re the daughter of a man who has cheated on your mother and you’re just asking for a little bit of help.”

  I chew my lip, think it over. It does sound easy when he puts it like that. I can do this.

  “We’re just two poor kids trying to track down whether their father came here.”

  “That’s your plan? Why would they buy it? We look nothing alike.”

  “Spin the story right, it won’t matter.”

  He sounds cocky, and it should irritate me, but yeah, it kind of makes me want to smile.

  Oh my God, he’s turning me into a total girl.

  “They won’t think about details if you sell it right,” Griff continues. “We just need to catch her off guard, get her a
little confused, get her making decisions from a knee-jerk reaction.”

  “And that will make her give us the names?”

  Griff grins like that’s answer enough. He looks so confident, I guess it is.

  “Just look pitiful.”

  I concentrate on Griff, think about being miserable—it’s not a hard stretch these days—and try to look suitably sad.

  “No, no, no.” He shakes his head, but I can tell he’s holding back a smile. “That’s not pitiful. That’s pissed.”

  I glare at him.

  “And that’s really pissed.” Griff ducks his head and kisses me, hard. My fingers curl around his. “Just let me do the talking, Wicked.”

  He makes it sound so easy.

  ♦

  We end up waiting in the romance section until the older librarian disappears into the children’s section, leaving the younger one running the front.

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t go for the old one?” I crane my head to see better, but it doesn’t do me much good. I’m too short. “Usually, older people are easier to scam, Griff.”

  “Yeah, but the younger one is recently divorced. She’ll be more receptive to letting us peek at the user log.”

  “How do you know she’s divorced?”

  Griff points to the fingers on his left hand. “White line where a wedding band would go. You can still see it, and the last time I was here, she was reading a self-help book about restarting life. My money’s on divorce.”

  His money? I start to tell Griff I’m not into betting, I prefer guarantees, when he grabs my hand and hauls me forward. I almost trip. We’re walking too fast. We practically charge across the carpeted space and, startled, the librarian looks up.

  “Can I help you?”

  Griff loops his arm around my shoulders. “I hope so. I have kind of a personal problem I need to ask you about.”

  Immediately, the woman’s eyes shutter. Her defenses go up, and so does my heart rate. I sniffle, round my eyes. Try to look pitiful and forlorn. I have no idea if it’s working.

  “Our dad left us,” Griff says, and it’s almost imperceptible, but she winces.

  “We think he used the computers here to access our family’s bank accounts. . . .” Griff trails off, glancing around like he’s scared someone’s going to hear. “He took everything: the savings, the money in the checking account. Everything.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Please, just hear me out. I know he used to come here. I was hoping if we could see the user logs and website histories, we could know for sure. It’s really for my mom. She doesn’t believe he would do it. She keeps coming up with all sorts of reasons why he couldn’t.” Now Griff is the one who winces. He’s talking about his mom, about what it was like to lose his dad. The best lies are the ones with an element of truth. He’s the one giving away pieces of himself, pieces he won’t get back.

  And he’s doing it for me.

  “She needs closure or whatever, and if she knew he really would stoop this low, it would help her to let go,” Griff says. “Please, we all need to know so we can get on with our lives.”

  The librarian glances behind her where, thankfully, the old lady is still nowhere in sight. When she turns around, her lip is caught between her teeth. “I don’t know. We’re not supposed to give anyone information on who’s been using the computers. It’s confidential.”

  “I know.” Griff presses a little closer, and she doesn’t back away. “I wouldn’t even ask except we’re in such a mess now.” He fidgets, thins his mouth until he looks like he’s holding in all the words he can’t—won’t—say. “We don’t know what we’re going to do. I’m just trying to help my mom deal.”

  The librarian’s hand goes to her throat, plays with the thin, gold necklace at her collarbone. “I’m sorry.”

  Sorry because it happened? Sorry because she can’t give us the names?

  Or sorry because she won’t?

  “Please.” I press my hand against the countertop, push down until my veins stand up. Our eyes meet. She’s thinking about her husband. I’m thinking about Lily.

  And even before she opens her mouth, I know she’s going to say yes.

  “I can’t believe you did that, Griff.” We push through the library’s double doors and turn the corner. “All the names and the website histories!”

  “I can’t believe you thought I wouldn’t.”

  It does seem crazy now. Totally delusional. I pull Griff close, and he pushes me into the library’s brick wall.

  “I wanted you to see what I would do for you.”

  “It’s not about what you can do for me. It never was.” His fingers are in my hair now, curving around the nape of my neck, pulling me apart. “I wanted your help because I needed you.”

  It slides out of me so fast. Too fast.

  “I need you, Griff.”

  His lips find mine. “You’re not alone anymore.”

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  HarperCollins Publishers

  .....................................................................

  “You’re useless to me now, do you know that?”

  His lips skid into this secret smile, like it’s all been

  some hilarious joke. But it’s not. And that’s how I

  know I’m in trouble. Because what do you do to

  your toys when you’re finished with them? You throw them away.

  —Page 86 of Tessa Waye’s diary

  The librarian has given us even more than we could have hoped for.

  But it doesn’t help.

  “Someone’s definitely logging on to Facebook from this location, and yeah, that could mean anything and anyone, but the time stamps match.” Griff turns the pages over and over. Our list of users goes back two weeks, but the website histories are for the past two months. He flips the report to the beginning. “But there are no names associated with the usage. It’s like he never signed in.”

  “Do you think their security is that sloppy?”

  Griff shrugs. “Possibly. Probably. It is a public library. They’re not really equipped. Good loophole for him. Bad for us. It’s a dead end.”

  “Not entirely.” I hand him the second page of the web histories report and point to a single line item between icanhas.cheezburger.com and WebMD. “We do have this.”

  Griff reads the website name, scowls. “LogMeIn? Wick, pursuing that angle will be a royal pain in the ass. If he installed that software so he could use the computer remotely, he could be anywhere. We need a different in.”

  “No, no, this could work for us.” I take the papers, stare at the list some more. LogMeIn is a website service that allows you to remotely access computers. Once you’re in, every movement you make is associated with the remote computer’s IP address. It’s a pretty good cover . . . but I still think I can make it work for us. “Look, we know he’s local, because he had repeated access to Tessa, and I’m sure he thinks he’s slick, but he’s hiding behind store-bought software, and he’s not smart enough to switch machines.”

  “What?”

  “The only computer that has usage, but no users, is A5.”

  “Every time?”

  “Every time. We’ve got him.”

  “How do you figure?”

  Funny how Griff asks the question. I can tell he already knows the answer.

  “Because I’ll go hunting.” I stuff the papers into my backpack so I don’t have to meet his eyes. Somehow we’re not the same two people from five minutes ago. Now I’m Wicket Tate, Hacker. Not Wicket Tate, the girl he wanted. It really ought to make me feel stronger, but it doesn’t. I feel like I’m draining through my feet, disappearing right in front of him. “I’ll do what I always do.”

  Griff makes a disgusted noise. “With what computer?”

  “The library’s.” I grab my jump drive and start to explain: “Odds are he’s going to return to that same IP address. I mean, even after using it to post Lily’s picture, he h
asn’t switched his access up. Look. He’s used the LogMeIn service twice after that. It’s comfortable for him. He knows it and now we know it. So we’ll lay a trap.”

  A small muscle twitches under Griff’s left eye. “Go on.”

  “I have this neat program. I wrote it to catch porn addicts for my customers. Once you find the target’s favorite sites, you piggyback my program onto the website.” The muscle’s twitching harder now, making my explanations tumble: “When the mark clicks on it, a message pops up about contacting me for further instructions.”

  Griff goes very, very still. “Contacting you?”

  “Yeah.” I nod. “It’ll look like blackmail, like I want money to keep quiet. The link I’ll provide is a variation on my Trojan virus, Pandora. It will get me onto his system.”

  “Hell no.”

  My chest screws tight. He wants my sister. “Griff, it’s perfect. I bait him. He follows—”

  “And if he’s good enough to get this far, he could turn the tables and come after you. No way.”

  I look up at him, and yeah, Griff’s tall and I’m short, but I feel smaller than ever right now. I feel small and helpless and useless and I hate it.

  I cross my arms, glare up at Griff. “What else do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t want you to play bait, Wick.”

  It sounds like an objection, but it’s not. I can hear the resignation in his voice. He knows I’m going to do this and he’s scared . . . so am I.

  Behind us, the library’s double doors swing open, and the young librarian walks toward the parking lot, a brown bag in one hand.

  There’s only one of them inside. I won’t get a better opportunity. I need to go now!

  I look at Griff, ready to explain, ready to run, but he’s already moving toward the doors.

  The library has a bank of ten computers, and thankfully, only two are in use. There’s a harassed-looking mother of two small children trying to email on one end and a senior citizen playing Sudoku on the other. With my luck, I figure A5 has to be one of the computers they’re using and I’m going to have to wait.

  Then I see the OUT OF ORDER Post-it taped to the screen of one computer. The screen itself is off, but the tower light is still blinking green.